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Wednesday, July 1, 2015

Insecure Writer's Support Group

It's the first Wednesday of the month and time for another Insecure Writer's Support Group post. A huge thank you to Ninja Captain Alex J. Cavanaugh for starting this group, and all this month's co-hosts for all their hard work. If you're an insecure writer or just looking to support those of us that are, check us out here!

My concern for the month centers around writing with a partner. I tend to be a solitary writer, territorial of my work and locked away for hours on end (preferably in the middle of the night) while I write. But for the first time I'm thinking or working on a new piece with another writer. And for the life of my I'm not sure how this is supposed to work. Do I write a chapter and they write a chapter, and review each other's pages? Do we write them together? How does this go?

Are there any of you out there who've done the co-writing thing before? How did you go about starting? Did you like it better or worse than solo-ing it? Any tips, tricks, or pieces of advice? I am all ears.

Good luck to all you other insecure writers out there, and as always, happy blogging!

13 comments:

This would be interesting to co-write with someone. Good luck with it! Can't offer any advice since I don't write, but I know when hubby and his brother would work on music together, both musicians obviously, one had the main idea and the other added their parts and whoever had the main idea got to decide if they liked those parts, but that was them and it was music.

I don't think I could ever be able to write a book with someone else. I want all the control. lol I'd want to change what they write. :P

I would write one chapter, my partner write the other, and review each other's work but only after discussing the story in-depth and agreeing on where the story needs to go and discussing each character.

I've never co-written a book before, but from what I've heard, I think the experience boils down to whether or not the writers involved have a good chemistry with one another. That is, whether or not you enjoy reading and writing the same kind of books, watching and critiquing the same kind of movies etc. Best of luck either way. I am sure you'll work it out and have some fun while you're at it. :)

I've never done co-writing before (it sounds really hard! Especially for me because I tend to be the type that writes all at once and then nothing and then all at once again so waiting for someone to get back to me in between bouts of "Inspiration" --also known as non laziness --and them waiting for me to get back to them during the slow phases would probably create a lot of page tension.) But I've heard of writers sending their work back and forth to each other on a daily basis, editing and writing until they couldn't remember who came up with which ideas.

Hey Lauren! I have no personal experience with co-writing, but I did attend a book signing by Sara Zarr and Tara Altebrando, who cowrote the YA novel ROOMMATES. They said that they wrote alternate chapters (which fit neatly with the format, because there were two alternating narrators), and that each one would just write her own chapter and then send it to the other, who didn't know until she got her partner's finished version what was going to happen in it! They both knew the ending in advance, but that's it. They said it worked for them and they had a lot of fun doing it that way, but I'm sure that method wouldn't work for everyone. Have a great weekend!